Elon Musk is buying Steam – and the consequences are already hitting us

Clear steam announcement to Epic: Elon Musk buys Valve.

Bellevue, Washington. With a leaf blower in hand, Tesla billionaire Elon Musk walked into Valve Corporation’s headquarters yesterday evening, smiling broadly. On Twitter he comments on the action with a laconic Just blowing off Steam. I’m just blowing off steam.

Of course, there is more to this than a joke. Musk bought Valve for a whopping $7.8 billion on the eve of April 1, 2023 – and with it Steam. Various classifications by well-known industry professionals who analyze the hostile takeover are already circulating on the Internet. The majority is certain: Musk’s announcement of his intention to integrate Steam into Tesla vehicles back in February 2022 was the first step in a larger plan.

Elon Musk himself, on the other hand, justifies his decision with his usual ingenious clarity:

In order to make the transition as pleasant as possible for Valve’s almost 400 employees, Musk underlines the takeover with the usual friendly special conditions, as he did on Twitter:

Of course, the question arises as to what that means for us players. And here the first consequences of Steam’s new owner already apply from today!

What does Steam’s acquisition mean for us?

Freedom of Speech (i.e. freedom of speech) should, like on Twitter, become Steam’s new top priority. A first step: Donald’s VAC ban MakeSteamGreatAgainTrump is quashed with immediate effect, even as he becomes the first ex-US President in history to face ongoing criminal proceedings for wallhacking PUBG after making controversial statements in Overwatch:

The second step: In the future you can write Steam Reviews for all games in the database, even if you don’t own or haven’t played them – but only with a paid subscription to Steam Orange.

Anyone who activates the small orange crowbar next to their own username also buys the right to refunds if a game is not good for you. For example, if you buy Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for 5 dollars in the Steam Sale and then return it, as an Orange customer you saved 5 dollars a month for a paltry 8 dollars. Just awesome.

The third step also affects us here at GameStar: In order not to jeopardize the right freedom of expression, the Steam curator program will be discontinued effective immediately. Of course you can still find our ratings (for the time being) on ​​GameStar.de, on Steam himself Elon Musk himself will review all those games that deserve it in the future. This just continues a trend that started on Twitter:

link to Twitter content

Clear announcement of steam to Epic

Steam and Epic have been delivering under the motto for years Less is more a fierce battle over who can implement the smallest possible innovations in their own products in the longest possible time. And it is precisely this strategy that Epic CEO Tim Sweeney wants to stick to in the future. Even after the announcement of half-patch, half-sequel Counter-Strike 2 and Musk’s takeover of Steam, he’s calmly sticking to his own strategy:

Nevertheless, experts see the Steam takeover as a clear steam announcement to Epic. So it’s not surprising that Elon Musk gets the biggest shocker until the very end his recent press conference cancels: Half-Life 3 appears much sooner than expected!

Advance from the planned release to the next turn of the century, Half-Life 3 should be on the digital store shelves as early as 2025. This is made possible by the latest advance in development: AI-supported writing, as we are currently experiencing at Ubisoft.

Elon Musk clearly shows the advantages over before:

Half-Life 3. It’s going to be awesome. An announcement like Donnerhall, which also makes it difficult for us as a journalistic trade magazine to maintain journalistic neutrality. Incidentally, Valve’s ex-boss Gabe Newell is calm about the takeover: I’ve always liked sleeping in the office. I’m not worried about my future career at Valve.